


Special Needs

by nuricurry



Category: Saint Seiya
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-10 00:13:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2003400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuricurry/pseuds/nuricurry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was ruined for everyone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Special Needs

**Special Needs**

Somehow, it wasn’t until he was nearly thirteen, and another boy had lashed out at him angrily that Saga realized that he was treated special.   
  
It wasn’t about the attention he got from his peers, or the other people at Sanctuary, that sort of behavior he kind of understood. They respected him, admired him, because he had proven himself, there was something he had done to earn those reactions from the others. It was about the sort of things he got from the other people in his life, the ones who he considered most important.   
  
"Why are you the Pope and Aiolos’ favorite?" a boy had snapped at him, after Saga bested him in a sparring match that the other had started, as a way to challenge Saga, who recently earned the gold cloth of the Gemini saint. It wasn’t just the anger in the tone that had surprised him right then, but also the insinuation, the implications that somehow, he was different, and other people saw him that way.   
  
Perhaps he should have noticed sooner. Since nearly the day that he had taken Saga and his brother in, Shion had looked after them in a way he didn’t look after anyone else in the Sanctuary. For over a year, Kanon and Saga had been allowed to live in the pope’s temple, their room right next door to Shion’s, and his door always open for them to come in. That could be explained as simply an extra percaution, Shion taking that time to teach the two boys how to live their lives as one person, and making sure the secret was kept safe from being discovered. But, what couldn’t be explained was the other things, the things that not even Saga could say Shion would have done for anyone, because he knew for a fact that he had never done much of the sort before.  
  
'Those things' were the nights that Shion let the two boys sleep in his room, making room on the bed for both of them to cuddle together beside him, understanding that not only did they need each other, but they also needed the comforting presence of an adult to chase away the nightmares and bad memories. He treated them special because no one else was ever invited with them when Shion would take the two on trips to Jamir or China, no one else was given spare change as an allowance and invited to go with Shion into the town down the road so they could use those few coins to buy treats and toys, sharing it between the two of them. Shion didn't have secret birthday parties with anyone else, he didn't give anyone else a birthday when they didn't have one of their own. Shion gave him the life he had now, simply because their paths had crossed one day, a mere chance of fate.  
  
With Aiolos, he didn’t have to do anything at all, to be told he was loved. He didn’t have to prove he was as strong as him, he didn’t have to become a saint, one of the most powerful of them all, in order to be called important to him. Saga didn’t have to explain away the days that he was ‘different’, he didn’t have to be asked about how his eyes changed (because he knew Aiolos saw them, even if he never said that he did). He didn’t have to do anything at all for Aiolos to simply know him, to know that sometimes, when he reached out to him, he wasn’t wholly himself, he was two hims at once, and he never asked why, never was bothered, never made him feel that he was different in the wrong ways, that he was special because he was broken and flawed.   
  
It wasn’t until he was fifteen that he wished he hadn’t been treated special at all, because when he didn’t get the thing he thought he wanted, need, _deserved_ , more than anything else in the world, the rejection felt like a betrayal.


End file.
